03/31/2015

When my niece was finishing school in Finland, more than anything else she wanted to become a primary teacher. Despite her genuine interest in teaching she failed to get into a teacher education programme at the University of Helsinki. She was smart and bright, yet she was not deemed qualified.

This is not unusual. Finnish universities regularly turn away applicants such as my niece to try again or to study something else. In fact, Finnish primary school teacher education programmes that lead to an advanced, research-based degree are so popular among young Finns that only one in 10 applicants is accepted each year. Those lucky students then have to study for five to six years before they are allowed to teach a class of their own.

There are those who think that the tough race to become a teacher in Finland is the key to good teaching and thereby to improving student achievement. Because only 10% of applicants pass the rigorous admission system, the story goes, the secret is to recruit new teachers from the top decile of available candidates.

This has led many governments and organisations to find new ways to get the best and the brightest young talents into the teaching profession. Various fast-track teacher preparation initiatives that lure smart young university graduates to teach for a few years have mushroomed. Smarter people make better teachers … or do they?

Who exactly are those who were chosen to become primary teachers in Finland ahead of my niece? Let’s take closer look at the academic profile of the first-year cohort selected at the University of Helsinki. The entrance test has two phases. All students must first take a national written test. The best performers in this are invited on to the second phase, to take the university’s specific aptitude test.

At the University of Helsinki, 60% of the accepted 120 students were selected on a combination of their score on the entrance test and their points on the subject exams they took to complete their upper-secondary education; 40% of students were awarded a study place based on their score on the entrance test alone.

Last spring, 1,650 students took the national written test to compete for those 120 places at the University of Helsinki. Applicants received between one and 100 points for the subject exams taken to earn upper-secondary school leaving diplomas. A quarter of the accepted students came from the top 20% in academic ability and another quarter came from the bottom half.

This means that half of the first-year students came from the 51- to 80-point range of measured academic ability. You could call them academically average. The idea that Finland recruits the academically “best and brightest” to become teachers is a myth. In fact, the student cohort represents a diverse range of academic success, and deliberately so.

03/30/2015

Tuulia Aherikko will graduate from the Finnish high school equivalent ’lukio’ this spring. She dreams of continuing her studies at the university, with the aim of working in veterinary medicine. Before she starts her university studies, however, she has decided to take a breather.

“After nine years of comprehensive school and three years of lukio, I’ve started to feel as if I would like to do something else for awhile than study. I don’t want my daily rhythm to be determined by school alone,” she says.

Of the students receiving their white Finnish graduation caps this spring, a growing number will be taking a gap year. A new “When school ends” study from the Economic Information Office TAT demonstrates that interest in taking a year off is now at an all-time high. More than one in every four intends to take a break from school before they continue their studies, when in the year before, that number was one in five.

New admissions policies one factor

One reason for the growing popularity of a gap year are new regulations in Finland with respect to the continued education application process, whereby first-time applicants are now given preference. It has also become more difficult to change one’s field of study midway through university studies, says TAT Director Liisa Tenhunen-Ruotsalainen.

“Young people feel as if they should know at once what they want to study and what they want to do. This is because, at present, there is no exact information about what kinds of quotas are valid for higher education admissions for those who are already studying or have a degree. This uncertainty creates more pressure for high school graduates who wish to pursue higher education,” she says.

Tenhunen-Ruotsalainen says young people also need to think more carefully about which lines of study will have enough work in the future. Young women in particular seem to think that taking a year off to ponder their options is warranted. “Girls generally want to make sure they make the right decision. They want to be absolutely certain about what they want to do in the future, and don’t take as many risks as boys.”

Work programmes at school

The TAT survey also indicates that young people undergo a great deal of uncertainty when confronted with the wide range of study and future job options available to them. Of the survey’s 4,000 respondents, only 18 percent said they knew with certainty what they planned to do after high school. A further 70 percent said they wished that they had more exposure to working life as part of their lukio studies.

I wish Canada had a mandatory gap year for high school graduates before post-secondary. Too many teenagers (especially boys), just aren't ready for serious study on the college or university level. A year of work (especially in a disagreeable job) would at least teach the kids what they don't want to do.

03/28/2015

The gender gap in reading is huge. And it's biggest in Finland, home to students who are internationally renowned for performing well on standardized tests, as this chart from the Brookings Institution shows:

Credit: Brookings Institution

Girls in Finland are so good at reading that they are carrying a chunk of the nation's academic reputation entirely on their shoulders. Finnish boys aren't standouts in reading at all — their reading scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment are no better than average. Boys in Finland read about as well as boys in the US. Whatever works so well in Finnish schools, in other words, might really only work for girls.

But Finland is just an extreme example of an international trend: for decades, around the world, in every developed country, girls are much better at reading than boys are — and no one knows why.

Study author Tom Loveless uses the PISA data to test a few theories, and comes up empty. When boys' enjoyment of reading goes up, their test scores don't always, which suggests that the problem isn't that girls just like to read more. The gap between girls' and boys' scores has shrunk in the US over the past 40 years, which suggests it's not a developmental or biological issue — "biology doesn't change that fast," Loveless writes.

And the problem eventually goes away: by their 20s and 30s, adults in both countries read at similar levels.

Via Business Cheat Sheet.com: How a Finnish Experiment Could Mean Better Education in America. Note that the writer's emphasis is on building practical skills for the workplace; he says nothing about the egalitarian structure of the Finnish system, or about the free education students receive—often all the way to graduate school—before joining the workforce. Excerpt:

The U.S. education system is fast beginning to resemble a decrepit (and worthless) financial derivative.

Noted venture capitalist Peter Thiel referred to the higher education system as the next bubble. And student loans are expected to be the next big default in the financial markets.

Part of the problem with the system’s returns is its emphasis on academic rigor at the expense of practical training. This approach does not necessarily translate into financial or career success later in life.

The American education industry could learn a few things from its Finnish counterpart. The Nordic state, which is regularly among the top scorers in student assessment indexes, is transforming its educational pedagogy from a subject-based curriculum to a topic-based one.

The new system, which is currently being tested, combines vocational training with humanities to ready children for the job market. According to capital city Helsinki’s development manager, the changes are “necessary for industry and modern society.”

The new Finnish education system emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to education. For example, students in the catering service industry are taught a mix of subjects such as English and math along with vocational skills related to catering. Similarly, English and geography are combined into a single subject.

Thus, it combines the practicality of a vocational approach with cross-functional expertise. According to Finnish authorities, outcomes for students in the new system have improved.

It is not hard to see why.

The system has multiple benefits. For starters, student grades will be a true reflection of their soft skills and hard skills. As an example, students who graduate from the catering service course will have a mix of communication and vocational skills (such as culinary expertise) necessary for their job.

This is unlike a subject-based approach, which emphasizes academic rigor over practical experience. In this case, academic grades determine the all-too-important internships, which are seen as gateways to the good jobs. This adds to the time and resources spent by a society to hone productive citizens. The new system enables graduates of the new system to become productive immediately after joining the workforce.

03/27/2015

As Finnish officials debate tuition fees for foreign students, a new study indicates that non-Finns cost universities more – but other institutes of higher education less.

The costs of tertiary education for foreigners are difficult to determine. A study published on Friday by the state-supported Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) aims to provide some idea of what educating foreigners costs Finland. The report was carried out for CIMO by the VATT Institute for Economic Research (VATT), which is also state-funded.

The study’s most surprising finding is that at universities of applied sciences and polytechnics, "foreign students have a lower cost impact than Finnish students". However the researchers stress that the data is not reliable enough to calculate exact price tags. For universities, foreign students may be significantly more expensive than Finnish ones.

Price estimates vary greatly

If the cost of education at all tertiary institutions is divided by the number of students, the average price is around 7,000 euros a year. At polytechnics, costs are slightly higher.

Colleges and universities have permanent overhead costs that remain steady regardless of how many people attend them, though. When these are taken into consideration, VATT estimates that each full-time basic degree student costs an average of 2800 euros annually. By this same yardstick, the cost at polytechnics is some 2300 euros.

Besides costs, foreign students bring Finland economic benefits in terms of consumption and work. Students may receive study grants from abroad, which they spend here on housing and food, for instance. They may also work part-time and pay taxes here. Those who live on student aid from overseas are generally a net gain for Finland, the paper suggests.

Tuition plan on the shelf for now

In December, the government abandoned its plan to charge university tuition fees for students from outside the European Economic Area studying in English.

It had proposed that universities would charge at least 4,000 euros a year. The plan had been promoted by some higher education institutions as well as business groups – but opposed by many student and lecturers’ associations. It was sent back to a working group for reconsideration. It remains to be seen whether the idea will be revived by the next government, expected to take office a couple of months from now.

Finland’s plans to replace the teaching of classic school subjects such as history or English with broader, cross-cutting “topics” as part of a major education reform have been getting global attention, thanks to an article in The Independent, one of the UK’s trusted newspapers. Stay calm: despite the reforms, Finnish schools will continue to teach mathematics, history, arts, music and other subjects in the future.

But with the new basic school reform all children will also learn via periods looking at broader topics, such as the European Union, community and climate change, or 100 years of Finland’s independence, which would bring in multi-disciplinary modules on languages, geography, sciences and economics.

It is important to underline two fundamental peculiarities of the Finnish education system in order to see the real picture. First, education governance is highly decentralised, giving Finland’s 320 municipalities significant amount of freedom to arrange schooling according to the local circumstances. Central government issues legislation, tops up local funding of schools, and provides a guiding framework for what schools should teach and how.

Second, Finland’s National Curriculum Framework is a loose common standard that steers curriculum planning at the level of the municipalities and their schools. It leaves educators freedom to find the best ways to offer good teaching and learning to all children. Therefore, practices vary from school to school and are often customised to local needs and situations.

Phenomenon-based learning

The next big reform taking place in Finland is the introduction of a new National Curriculum Framework (NCF), due to come into effect in August 2016.

It is a binding document that sets the overall goals of schooling, describes the principles of teaching and learning, and provides the guidelines for special education, well-being, support services and student assessment in schools. The concept of “phenomenon-based” teaching – a move away from “subjects” and towards inter-disciplinary topics – will have a central place in the new NCF.

Integration of subjects and a holistic approach to teaching and learning are not new in Finland. Since the 1980s, Finnish schools have experimented with this approach and it has been part of the culture of teaching in many Finnish schools since then. This new reform will bring more changes to Finnish middle-school subject teachers who have traditionally worked more on their own subjects than together with their peers in school.

Schools decide the programme

What will change in 2016 is that all basic schools for seven to 16-year-olds must have at least one extended period of multi-disciplinary, phenomenon-based teaching and learning in their curricula. The length of this period is to be decided by schools themselves. Helsinki, the nation’s capital and largest local school system, has decided to require two such yearly periods that must include all subjects and all students in every school in town.

The news that Finland is abolishing teaching separate subjects has recently hit the headlines world-wide. Subject teaching is not being abolished although the new core curriculum for basic education will bring about some changes in 2016.

The subjects common to all students in basic education are stipulated in the Basic Education Act, and the allocation of lesson hours among school subjects is prescribed in the Decree given by the Government.

However, education providers have had a high degree of freedom in implementing nationally set objectives for more than twenty years. They may develop their own innovative methods, which can differ from those in other municipalities.

The new core curriculum for basic education that will be implemented in school in August 2016 contain some changes which might have given rise to the misunderstanding. In order to meet the challenges of the future, the focus is on transversal (generic) competences and work across school subjects. Collaborative classroom practices, where pupils may work with several teachers simultaneously during periods of phenomenon-based project studies are emphasised.

The pupils should participate each year in at least one such multidisciplinary learning module. These modules are designed and implemented locally. The core curriculum also states that the pupils should be involved in the planning.

Finland's education system is internationally renowned. But the nation is in the middle of a broad overhaul of its framework for education: loose guidelines for schools and districts on what students should learn. The changes are meant to ensure the school system is in step with what the nation will need in the future, and to emphasize students working together and "the joy of learning," according to Finland's national board of education.

The main goal of the new approach is to address a concern Finns have about their education system: that it doesn't do enough to encourage curiosity and make learning relevant in the real world, [Pasi] Sahlberg said.

Compared with the OECD average, students in Finland are more likely to be late for school, more likely to say they give up easily when confronted with a difficult problem, and less likely to say they do more than what is expected of them. (Students in the US are also more likely to say they remain interested in their work once they've started it than Finnish students are, and are more likely to say they exceed expectations.)

"Finland has been working a long time already to try to find ways to engage young people more into their own learning and to make schoolwork more meaningful and interesting," Sahlberg said.

But Finland will still have national expectations for what students learn. In other words, even if some schools eliminate math and language classes for part or even all of the year, students will still be expected to master those subjects.

Finland has always topped the list of countries hosting some of the most successful schools in the world apart from being progressive. Finnish education has been highly admired for its endeavour towards ensuring quality. It has been pro-actively engaged in experimenting with the education system.

To match up with the ever changing industry across the globe, in a latest move, it has decided to do away with subject-wise teaching and introduce teaching by topic. This means, now students will learn cross-subject topics.

For example, a topic on European Union will amalgamate portions of subjects like economics, geography and languages thus replacing history and geography as regular subjects. This will also encourage students to take up problem-solving activities thus, breaking ways from the traditional classroom learning.

This announcement has got mixed responses from the teaching community in India.

“An interdisciplinary mode of education helps a child to understand and learn better. We need not call mathematics as mathematics. It can be taught through many different ways like dance, music or art. Why do we need to have names for the subject? We can teach them through a variety of interesting methodologies that can help engage the children better. Children look at the subject as difficult and worrisome as it is not well-connected to our real life. We can form such connections through interdisciplinary mod and better pedagogy. For example, at Springdales, we taught the Pythagoras theorem through dance. What we are teaching is completely disengaged mathematics from life. Interdisciplinary studies in maths work well till class 8 at least. This will help them grasp their fundamentals better,” says Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal, Springdales School, Pusa Road.

Contradicting with Wattal, Gowri Ishwaran, the founder-principal of Delhi-based Sanskriti School and a renowned educationist says maths is fundamental to understanding life and it cannot be done away with as a subject at the school level.

“We need to have the subjects accompanied by value added subjects. You should make history more alive and global and teach children interesting things that have relevance to the present day. Today, we teach history as isolated facts, and students just rote learn various facts. We need to bring about a radical overhaul in the way we teach our students and the curriculum itself. Make subjects more dynamic rather than removing them. Indian context is encouraging rote learning whereas it should encourage discovery and innovation.”

Asked if this move will work well in our country, Krishank Indoria, class 10, JD Tytler School, New Delhi says, “I don’t think it is a good move as students would never get to know about the history of their country and its growth. Maths is not only important as a subject but it also plays a crucial role in our daily life. Such a revolutionary initiative can never be successful in India considering the fact that admissions to major universities depends on these subjects.”

However, there are few who believe that India needs to give a face-lift to the existing education system. “Finland's move is really good because at the end of the day history is not going to help me administer a state, or maths is not going to help me launch satellites. It is the applications that will help us in the long run. I believe that this is the need of the hour in India. The fields of occupations are widening, henceforth skills are more important than mugging up concepts and theories,” says Shikhar Tripath, class 12, DPS Mathura Road.

The new approach would be dramatically different for today's students and teachers, but in fact the idea of combining subjects is at least a century old and dates to the American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey, "who believed that school should be connected to real life," said Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

"When you teach subjects separate from one another -- you teach science, you teach math, you teach reading -- that means that there's a divorce between these contents, when in real life, they're not," Cuban added. "When you're cultivating a garden, you've got to know a lot about botany, insects, fertilizer, math, and a whole bunch of other things."

As Finnish educators describe their goals, the program sounds similar to the approaches that U.S. teachers adopted briefly during Dewey's lifetime -- before World War II -- and again four decades ago, during the years of "open classrooms."

Teachers abandoned the technique for a few reasons, Cuban said. The interdisciplinary approach didn't fit well with public schools' general format, in which students are expected to learn a certain amount of material before moving on to the next grade. Not only that, but the system demanded more of teachers, who had to know multiple subjects in depth and be able to develop assignments based on individual students' strengths and interests.

These are goals that every teacher aspires to, of course, but Finnish teachers are arguably better prepared to achieve them. Finns must meet rigorous requirements in order to become teachers, as Krista Kiuru, the education minister, explained last year. "Teachers have a lot of autonomy," she told The Atlantic. "They are highly educated--they all have master’s degrees, and becoming a teacher is highly competitive."